How a Pixar-esque makeover helped put a military hardman in the palace

Jakarta: He once called Joko Widodo a tool of the oligarchs; a phoney who’d spun himself to prominence with slick public relations.

Jokowi, as the Indonesian president is commonly known, was no everyman, Prabowo Subianto railed. Neither was he humble. Supporters of the old general spread rumours during the so-called black campaign of 2014 that Joko was secretly Christian and ethnically Chinese, an Indonesian version of the “birther” campaign once deployed against the United States president of the day, Barack Obama.

Indonesia’s likely new president Prabowo Subianto (right) and his running mate Gibran Rakabuming Raka at a post-election party on Wednesday.Credit: AP

Prabowo lost the election in 2014. And though he had previously suggested quitting politics (“If you’re not needed, you must know when to step aside”), he lost again to Joko in 2019 and claimed voter fraud. Deadly protests followed.

But a decade is a long time in any political scene. The events in between, particularly since 2019, explain what is happening now inside the brimming Istora Senayan indoor sports stadium in Jakarta.

It is Wednesday evening, and the nuggety former general, now 72, is finally delivering his longed-for victory speech. Behind him on the podium, dressed in a matching baggy, blue-checked shirt, is Joko’s 36-year-old heir, Gibran Rakabuming Raka, who will serve as Prabowo’s vice president.

A chant rises from the clamorous bays of their supporters: “Joko-wi, Joko-wi, Joko-wi”.

Unofficial “quick counts”, reputable early voting samples compiled by polling agencies, have the Prabowo-Gibran ticket – backed by a large and resource-rich coalition – cruising to victory in the country’s fifth direct presidential elections since the fall of corrupt dictator Suharto in 1998.

Prabowo, a powerful former commander of Indonesia’s elite special forces, is said to have wanted to take over from his father-in-law even way back then. Instead, he went into self-exile in Jordan, having been dismissed from the military for his reputed role in the 1998 kidnap and torture of democracy activists, 12 of whom remain missing. Prabowo denies any knowledge of their fate.

Maria Catarina Sumarsih, whose son was killed by security forces in 1998, holds up a red card as a warning for President Joko Widodo, who backed Prabowo Subianto.Credit: AP

He returned in the early 2000s with a view to saving the fledgling democracy from descending into a “banana republic”. But he failed to win the 2004 presidential nomination for Golkar, Suharto’s political vehicle. He lost again under the banner of his own party, Gerindra, as the vice presidential running mate to political matriarch Megawati Sukarnoputri in 2009.

It was about this time the nation began taking note of a former furniture manufacturer who grew up in the riverbank shanties of Central Java.

In 2010, Joko, the antithesis of Indonesia’s ruling class of elites, was re-elected in a landslide as the mayor of Solo.

Trying to “launder their sullied political reputations” ahead of the 2014 national elections, Prabowo and Megawati attached themselves to the rising star by courting him to run for the influential post of Jakarta governor in 2012.

“As it happened, they proved too successful at talent spotting and Jokowi would pip them at the post, showing he could hold his own in the manipulative games played by the nation’s top politicians,” Ben Bland wrote in his biography of Jokowi, Man of Contradictions.

Amid the unrest following his second victory in 2019, Joko did something wily and unusual. He brought the fiery Prabowo into his government as defence minister, the first step of a steep rapprochement that would lead to the former general’s victory on Wednesday.

Joko was begrudgingly barred by the Constitution from running for a third term as president. He has much he wants to see through, notably his $US34 billion ($51 billion) vision of a new capital city in the remote jungle of Borneo.

He has been roundly criticised for manipulating the state apparatus to his own ends and hobbling the corruption watchdog, but Joko remains wildly popular among ordinary Indonesians enamoured with his modest, action-man persona and the nation’s expanding economy.

This time around, Prabowo and Joko appeared to see a mutual benefit: Prabowo would campaign as the candidate of continuity, while Joko would remain influential and satisfied his legacy would roll on.

The most powerful symbol of this tacit union is Joko’s son, Gibran, who, despite showing no previous inclination for politics, followed his father’s footsteps to get elected as the mayor of Solo in 2020. Like his dad, he won close to 90 per cent of the vote.

The former culinary entrepreneur, who studied for a time at the University of Technology Sydney, was permitted to join Prabowo’s team as running mate thanks to a controversial decision of the Constitutional Court. It ruled that his election in Solo excused him from meeting the vice presidential age minimum of 40.

Chief Justice Anwar Usman – Joko’s brother-in-law and Gibran’s uncle – cast the nine-member panel’s deciding vote.

Gibran, his face often impassive on the campaign trail, had a successful career before politics. Is this the building of a Jokowi dynasty? Does Gibran really want to be here?

Prabowo Subianto (left) is taken to his father’s grave in Jakarta on Thursday.Credit: AP

“What I know is that his dad cannot handle him. This guy does whatever he wants,” says Blontank Poer, a journalist from Solo who knows the new second-in-charge of the world’s third-largest democracy.

“When Jokowi wanted to run for the second time as mayor, the hardest part was to get Gibran’s blessing. He protested because Jokowi would have less time for family.

“I don’t know what made him go completely the opposite direction into politics … [but] I suspect he became vice president because of a calling.”

Prabowo lost to Jokowi by six points in 2014 and by about 11 in 2019. It wasn’t much. And with the popular president barred from running again, the path was open for one last shot in 2024. But there was more to do than just secure the unspoken Joko imprimatur.

Unproven allegations persist here of Prabowo fomenting murderous anti-Chinese riots in 1998 and human rights violations in the conflict zones of Timor-Leste, Aceh and West Papua.

All of them are denied, but the United States deemed the claims credible enough to bar him from entry for many years – until Prabowo became defence minister in 2019.

Australia, too, as reported in these pages, once had him on the visa blacklist. The Department of Home Affairs would not comment, citing privacy.

“Any foreign press will ask me about human rights – this is the story of the last 16 years,” he bristled to the BBC before the 2014 campaign. “It comes up by my enemies. It’s part of the games of politics.” These days, Prabowo rarely talks to Western reporters.

His murky past did come up in this election, though his presidential rivals, former governors Ganjar Pranowo and Anies Baswedan, hardly pressed the point.

The Prabowo team is considering whether to install the vanquished foes as ministers when it takes over from Joko in October.

Indonesia’s population is young – about half of more than 200 million eligible voters are not even 40 – and removed from their nation’s undemocratic past. An important means of mitigating the persistent human rights shadow was his recruitment of the very student activists he persecuted in Suharto’s dying months.

Prabowo apologised to Budiman Sudjatmiko, himself a politician, for what happened in 1998, though he didn’t elaborate. He and his comrades were only following orders.

“Things are getting better for the Indonesian nation, and we can maturely discuss differences and remember the past as the past,” Budiman told the Indonesian press. “In that context, I invite Pak [Mr] Prabowo to go onward. Hopefully, with my support, the nation’s best people like Pak Prabowo will not be haunted by the past.”

Crucially, the image of a former military hardman with a renowned temper received a stunning makeover through social media and whip-smart spinners.

The wealthy princeling, who in 2014 rode into a stadium on horseback like an “Indonesian Mussolini”, was recast as a grandfatherly figure with a penchant for breaking into spontaneous and dorky dancing. It was all so “gemoy”, a local slang for adorable.

He and Gibran appeared on TikTok during the campaign in energetic, fast-cut clips set to funky beats. They appeared online and on billboards as cuddly Pixar-esque avatars. At their final rally last Saturday, their blown-up cartoonish forms floated high above the 100,000-strong crowd.

Cartoon avatars for presidential frontrunners Prabowo and Gibran.

Among the chosen few by the stage was Prabowo’s ex-wife Titiek, a daughter of Suharto, who remains a staunch supporter of his endless ambitions for the palace.

“She is rolled out every five years to address concerns of voters that there won’t be a first lady,” says Marcus Mietzner, an associate professor at the Australian National University.

Prabowo called her to the stage to loud and sustained applause and again excited his audience by thanking her in his victory speech.

But the most thunderous applause at both events went came after name-checks of someone not even there, to the man looming quietly behind the scenes, his presidential legacy wrapped in gold and the family dynasty assured: “Joko-wi!”

Get a note directly from our foreign correspondents on what’s making headlines around the world. Sign up for the weekly What in the World newsletter here.